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20 Crazy Details Behind The Making Of The Sixth Sense

It’s incredible to think thatThe Sixth Sense reaches the milestone of 20 next year. What started off as a cult classic gradually spread through word of mouth and became the second highest grossing movie of 1999.

The film has now become synonymous with one great child actor, one visionary director’s debut, and one fantastic plot twist.

The director himself, M. Night Shyamalan, has enjoyed incredible highs and lows in his career. His debut The Sixth Sense earned him comparisons with Spielberg, but this pressure may have been his undoing.

After a slew of stinkers in the form of The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth, Shyamalan was effectively blacklisted from Hollywood.

It was only after the mediocre success of found footage movie The Visit and his resurgence with Split that he has recently been taken seriously again.

With this new found respect, people have cast their minds to back to his beloved debut film and reminisced fondly over his merits as a director and a writer. No longer is he the butt end of Hollywood jokes, he is a director who has an exciting film on the way with Glass.

However, there are many pieces of The Sixth Sense behind the scenes trivia that most are unfamiliar with.

From an Arrested Development cast member auditioning for a leading part to an esteemed newspaper criticizing the movie upon its release, there are many previously untold secrets about The Sixth Sense.

With this in mind, here are the 20 Crazy Details Behind The Making Of The Sixth Sense.

20 Bruce Willis was forced to be in it

This was the first of two movies that Bruce Willis owed Disney after he shut down another production: The Broadway Brawler.

Tales of Willis’s difficult nature as an actor are legendary in Hollywood such as his drama with Kevin Smith. However, according to IMDb, on the set of The Broadway Baller he ended the movie for good after firing the director.

As part of his Disney contract, he was signed on to The Sixth Sense and another less successful movie in 2000 called The Kid.

Another thing Willis had to sacrifice, along with his freedom to choose projects, was his usual salary. He was paid a measly ten million dollars for The Sixth Sense, half of his usual salary at the time.

Indeed, it’s incredible that one of Bruce Willis’ most iconic roles, some say his defining role, only came to be due to a contract dispute.

19 Donnie Wahlberg lost 43 pounds for his role

Donnie Wahlberg may be known as the less successful older brother of Marky Mark but in The Sixth Sense he gets a chance to prove himself.

So committed to his role as the disturbed Vincent Grey was Donnie that he told Shyamalan that he was going to lose some weight.

While the role eventually went to Haley Joel Osment, Cera has had the more successful career compared to Osment’s career which faded after Spielberg’s A.I: Artifical Intelligence.

It is possible to note, however, that Cera has fallen into a relatively typecast role as a socially awkward teenager/man.

It is hard to imagine the mainly comic actor Cera playing the troubled Cole in The Sixth Sense but maybe in another world he could have secured an Oscar nomination for the film like Osment did.

17 Haley Joel Osment’s hardest scene was in a car

While it may be hard to imagine Osment not being traumatised while filming The Sixth Sense, he actually enjoyed it.

Having said this, it was by no means a trouble-free time filming Shyamalan’s debut movie.

Osment revealed to Syfy that the hardest scene he filmed was when “we're in the car, me and Toni Collette, and she finally learns my big secret, that was a technically tough day. It was raining, we were in a car and I remember being kind of rushed on that one and the tone of the scene is really delicate.”

He went on to note that “We did seven takes of it and we just felt like we weren't getting it, and by the seventh one we felt like we had gotten some good stuff but there was still this unsureness.”

16 One scene was deemed too scary to keep in

While most of the original script for The Sixth Sense made it to film, one scene in particular was deemed to horrific to be in the movie.

While the soundtrack was not as readily available before release as a film soundtrack would be today, anyone who happened to buy it before seeing the film in 1999 would have had the film’s biggest plot twist spoilt for them in a matter of seconds.

11 The color red is important

The color red is an important part of this seminal 1999 movie as any film studies student will tell you. Its absence from the movie is of particular interest, as is its rare inclusion in the form of particular objects.

The third act of The Sixth Sense in particular sees the focus on red a lot more, perhaps representing the fact that the protagonist has been dead for the whole film.

There were many notable red objects, such as the doorknob on the locked basement door, the red balloon, Cole's sweater at the birthday party, and the door of the church where Cole seeks sanctuary.

Considering this is Shyamalan’s debut film, his eye for detail is extremely impressive and shows those who dismiss him that he is a director who should not be disregarded in a hurry.

10 There were problems with one of the most iconic lines

While the famous line “I see dead people” has taken on many forms in parody, memes and top 10 movie quotes, the original direction of the quote caused a lot of stress.

As can be seen in the film, when Cole says “I see dead people,” the camera cuts straight to Bruce Willis.

While admittedly the phrasing is a bit different, it defies belief that Willis was in two movies where this sentiment was apparent.

One other big coincidence that both Sixth Sense and 12 Monkeys share is their character's names.

Willis’s character is called James Cole, his last name being the same as Haley Joel Osment’s character's first name. Spooky.

6 Bruce Willis only wears one outfit throughout the movie

Eagle-eyed fans of The Sixth Sense may notice that Willis always wears a slight variation of the same clothes throughout.

However, this is far from the wardrobe department being lazy, this is another instance of Shyamalan’s attention to detail.

It is possible to notice that Willis is wearing the same clothes he wore on the night his life was taken.

The grey shirt, the smart trousers, the jacket and the waistcoat make multiple appearances in various combinations.

This is one of many clues that Shyamalan gives the audience to tell them that Willis is in fact deceased the whole time.

This clue only makes the reveal more satisfying as we are given the information to work it out from the start.

5 The New York Times slated it upon release

While The Sixth Sense largely relied on word of mouth from audiences which helped it achieve a staggering $672 million, the positives reviews played a part in its success.

However, while across the board The Sixth Sense secured universal acclaim, there was one esteemed publication that criticised it.

The New York Times gave it a terrible review with the reviewer noting poor acting and a basic plot.

Stephen Holden particularly criticised leading actor Willis as having "only one basic facial expression." He concluded by calling it an "insufferably coy drama of another wee Philadelphian searching for proof of god’s existence."

In hindsight, Holden may realise that he is in the minority of the population and that the review has not aged well.

4 Haley Joel Osment no longer finds horror movies scary

The Sixth Sense has the honour of being one of six horror films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The others are The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, Black Swan and Get Out.

However, despite being an undeniably scary movie, Haley Joel Osment claims that he is no longer scared of horror films.

He told IMDb of his experience making Sixth Sense: "there is something desensitizing (not necessarily in a negative way) about seeing the whole process of making a horror movie that prevents you from being too scared going forward."

Similar to the idea that after working at a candy shop you would eventually get bored of candy, this proves true as the horror movie that propelled Osment to fame has made him immune to the scares of other such films.

3 Bruce Willis became ambidextrous to not spoil the twist

While Shyamalan was keen to give his audiences the occasional hint towards the final plot twist, he did his best not to explicitly spell it out.